Functionalist Perspectives on the Family

8 Key excerpts on "Functionalist Perspectives on the Family"

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  eBook - ePub

  The SAGE Handbook of Family Business

  • Leif Melin, Mattias Nordqvist, Pramodita Sharma, Leif Melin, Mattias Nordqvist, Pramodita Sharma, Author(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  More specifically, what are the implications for agency-oriented research if more explicit attention was paid to the fact that many agents in family firms are actually members of the owning family? Although such family managers may not yet be owners (i.e., principals), it seems that they represent a distinct class of agent – one that could perhaps be labelled ‘latent principals’. Given their intermediate status somewhere between pure agents and pure principals, we wonder about the implications for the employment contracts of these managers. For instance, are the family’s social exchange principles (such as equality or need) or the firm’s economic exchange principles (typically merit or equity) more important to the design of such contracts? We also wonder about the implications across different types of employment contracts. Are social exchange considerations more important for family versus non-family agents working within family firms – or are they less so? It would be interesting if researchers were to discover, for example, that economic rather than social contract breaches are reacted to more by family members, possibly because of the potential to repair the latter type of breach within the family sphere. These are but a handful of illustrative ways in which we can envision the social exchange perspective from family science extending extant work within only the agency-oriented stream of family business research. We encourage others to consider its potential contributions to other dominant paradigms and core topics. Pairing social exchange theory with resource dependence theory in future research on family firms seems particularly germane and potentially informative.

  STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM

  Summary of the Theoretical Perspective

  Structural functionalism became an especially important theory of family sociology in the postwar era, dominating research from the early 1940s to the mid 1960s (Mann et al., 1997). It arose as a response to one of the pressing questions of the time: How could citizens be assured stability and safety within a post-industrial, post-war society? Talcott Parsons (1951), the founder of this theory, suggested that the answer lay in the construction of a normative family unit that would be the foundational social building block of society. This family unit would provide two important social functions: the socialization of children and a place where adult personalities could be developed in a stable environment.

  A few key assumptions shape structural functionalist theory. For one, the societal context is acknowledged to exert external forces upon families. These outside forces are often viewed as threats, and the role of the family unit is to serve as a buffer between them and the wellbeing of family members. Central also to structural functionalism is the assumption that families socialize children, and that this function provides the stability essential for the maintenance of society (Smith et al., 2009). In addition, structural functionalists assume that this stability is achieved when there is equilibrium, or balance, in the family. Balance is best maintained through compliance with a narrowly defined notion of family; i.e., the traditional structure consisting of husband, wife, and children (Kingsbury and Scanzoni, 2004).

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  The Family

  • Liz Steel, Warren Kidd, Anne Brown(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  And how, in turn, the family is served and influenced by those other institutions. Exercise 3.5 This exercise is designed to encourage you to find some of your own answers to this K U second question. Copy the following table and then fill in the gaps. Use those already I A completed to guide you to appropriate answers. Functional relationships between the family and other social institutions Institution Influence from family Influence on family Education Family socializes child before school and provides support during school years Religion Religion sets down rules for marriage and family relationships Provides family solidarity Consensus Theories of Families and Households 33 Politics Family provides new socialized citizens/voters and imbues young person with initial political attitudes Law Laws determine boundaries with regard to how family members can treat each other – e.g. the age at which children can be left alone, and so on Work Supplies jobs and income to support family members Equilibrium and change One of the most frequent criticisms of functionalism is that it does not adequately account for social change: indeed, if all parts of society are fulfilling their purpose or function satisfactorily, then why should there be any need for change? In this respect, functionalism can be viewed as a rather conservative theory – it appears to support the status quo (the way things currently are), and therefore other sociologists would say that it supports those who are in power. However, social change clearly does take place and functionalists have attempted to account for it. In general, they see society as balanced, frictionless, in equilibrium, but recognize that changes will inevitably take place to disturb this equilibrium. Change is, however, usually seen as something that is temporary, a transitory period of adjustment between periods of stability. In the section on historical context, the name of Herbert Spencer was mentioned.

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  The Family

  An Introduction

  • C. C. Harris(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Part II The Family and Society Passage contains an image

  4

  The Family and Industrial Society

  IN our discussion of the universality of the nuclear family in the previous chapter, we noted that one way in which the widespread existence of this group might be explained was by examining the degree to which society was dependent upon its existence. This line of argument was not however pushed very far because it was possible to show that it is extremely difficult to avoid having something remarkably similar to the family if humankind is to reproduce itself at all. We now turn to a consideration of the relation of the family and society in more detail. In so doing we shall have to consider both the consequences that the family has for other social institutions and the consequences which those institutions have for the family.

  The Functional Theory of the Family

  The ‘functional theory’ of the family seeks to explain the existence of the family by showing that it has certain SOCIAL FUNCTIONS . To say that an institution has a social function is to say that the performance of the activities (governed by that set of expectations concerning the way people should behave to one another, to which we refer when we speak of the institution concerned) has certain effects on the other social institutions which go to make up the society. However it says more than this. When we speak of the social functions of an institution, we are not concerned with any effects the activities which it governs may have. We are concerned with those effects without which a society could not exist.

  That isn’t quite the end of the story however. The expectations which govern the performance of the activities which are necessary to the existence of any society must not only ensure the adequate performance of such activities. They must also ‘fit’ the other sets of expectations which govern the performance of other necessary activities in the particular

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  Social Intervention

  • Klaus Hurrelmann, Franz-Xaver Kaufmann, Friedrich Lösel(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  Conditions of Family Functioning Angelika Engelbert and Alois Herlth Living in a family is rewarded and supported by society because families fulfill important societal functions, e.g. socialization of the offspring or reproduction of the labor force. Moreover, living in a family is the favorite way of living for many men and women because it is considered an effective means for realizing individual aims, needs and interests of the family members themselves, such as intimacy, emotional support, validation of the self, and all the other valued things that make the family a haven in a heartless world (Lasch, 1977). Societal needs as well as individual needs and interests pose a lot of tasks the family as a social system has to perform (Hill, 1971; Aldous, 1978). Those tasks usually are quite different, involving different members (father, mother, children) with different needs, interests, and priorities of aims, and changing throughout the life cycle. The daily activities of family members are more or less determined by the necessities of such tasks: In order to guarantee task fulfillment, families develop a certain style of family life, including a certain level of normative agreement, including permanent patterns of communication and decision —making, including organizational routines, practices, distribution of roles and tasks, and so on. A family system is an organized structure of such permanent patterns of task fulfillment. These permanent patterns are necessary for managing all the different factors which constitute family tasks and which enable the family system to perform them. This organized structure can be viewed as a kind of equilibrium, a web of interrelated rules. For example, the way of managing household tasks concerns the work role of family members, and this role concerns the childrearing practices a family has to establish, and so on.

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  Substance Use and Abuse

  Sociological Perspectives

  • Victor N. Shaw(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  It is historically discriminative and logically implausible to just view substance and substance use as marginal, random, deviant, and irrational side products of a generally substantive, consistent, normal, and rational human evolutionary process. Definition The functionalist perspective has been marked by its conventional ap- proach or conservative agenda to the study of conforming practices. Applied to substance use, however, it represents a reversal of the conven- tional or conservative attitude toward the issue. In fact, it sounds far more than liberal when it assumes and is poised to explore various functions substance use serves for individuals and larger economic, political, cul- tural, and social systems. A more theoretical, systemic, or epistemological portrayal does not seem to dim much of its unconventional overtone or overture when the functionalist perspective is defined as an approach that examines substance and substance use as prevalent and persistent social phenomena, as functional and integral parts of human life, and as neces- sary and universal elements in natural adaptation and cultural creation by mankind. No matter how it sounds to the general public, the functionalist per- spective looks for every function that substance use contributes to human 80 Substance Use and Abuse beings and their social life. Functions are broadly perceived as beneficial, facilitative, or promotional to specific mental or physical activities in terms of frequency, intensity, duration, performance, or result, as well as to specific social processes or institutions with respect to scale, scope, main- tenance, effectiveness, efficiency, and consequence. The functionalist per- spective will surely shed critical light on and offer unique insights about substance, substance use, and substance users as it attempts to pull the whole issue out of the attic and garret of the socially negative.

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  Classical Sociological Theory

  • Craig Calhoun, Joseph Gerteis, James Moody, Steven Pfaff, Indermohan Virk, Craig Calhoun, Joseph Gerteis, James Moody, Steven Pfaff, Indermohan Virk(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Part IX Functionalism Introduction to Part IX 41 “The Position of Sociological Theory” 42 “Manifest and Latent Functions” 43 “Social Structure and Anomie” Classical Sociological Theory , Fourth Edition. Edited by Craig Calhoun, Joseph Gerteis, James Moody, Steven Pfaff, and Indermohan Virk. Editorial material and organization © 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2022 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Functionalism (sometimes called “structural functionalism”) refers to a body of theory first developed in the 1930s and 1940s that treats society as a set of interdependent systems. The theory rests on an organic analogy that likens a social system to a physical body, in which each subsystem is necessary to maintain the proper functioning of the entire organism. From a functionalist point of view, the key to understanding a social subsystem is thus to trace its function in the working of the whole. According to such arguments, there are a number of functional “requisites” necessary to meet the basic needs of any society (see Aberle et al. 1950). Specific subsystems develop to meet those social needs. Functional theorists generally assumed that these subsystems would tend toward a stable equilibrium, with social change proceeding in a gradual evolutionary manner. For example, the social need for a common form of communication leads to a stable, slowly evolving system of language. The need to control disruptive behavior leads to a relatively stable legal and political system. Perhaps most importantly, every society has some system for assigning people to different social positions and socializing them into the relevant roles, resulting in a relatively stable stratification system. To say that a system is “functional” is thus to say that it serves the needs of the society as a whole, not that it serves the interests of every individual.

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  The Encyclopædia of Sexual Behaviour

  Volume 1

  • Albert Ellis, Albert Abarbanel, Albert Ellis, Albert Abarbanel(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Butterworth-Heinemann

    (Publisher)

  It gives little attention to the other functions of the Family. Some thirty years have not only failed to reveal any withering away of the Family either in the U.S.S.R. or the United States, but have revealed trends toward making the Family stronger and more important. A careful review of the functions of the Family along with its structural position in society will show the un-reasonableness of the Lunacharsky-Watson predictions. Changing Functions of the Family The functions of the Family may be outlined as follows : I. NATURAL-SOCIAL (pertaining to higher animals and all mankind) Reproduction Sexual satisfaction Feeding and care of helpless young Love and companionship II. INSTITUTIONAL (cultural, purely human, varying greatly among the world's different societies) Economic production: Material goods Material services: feeding, care of clothing and body, shelter, rest, privacy, transportation Protection of members Against enemies and dangers Against want (support, assistance, insurance) Social control and culture transmission Personal identification and status-ascription Property control and transmission Socialization (basic discipline) of child Control of sex behavior Other behavior controls over children, adolescents, and adults Education informal and formal Religious worship and education Recreation Hospitality and friendship Protection against enemies and dangers, and behavior controls over adults, were largely transferred to the State when the trustee family or clan phase passed away. With the Industrial Revolution the production of material goods was largely transferred from home to factory. Protection of deprived individuals and nuclear families has been transferred from the extended family to voluntary charities, private insurance companies, and more lately to the social-welfare and social-security organs of the State.

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  Rethinking Sociological Theory

  Introducing and Explaining a Scientific Theoretical Sociology

  • Stephen K. Sanderson(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter One Functionalism BASIC PRINCIPLES Functionalism is a term that has been widely used in the social sciences, sociology and anthropology in particular, to identify a variety of related lines of thought. For my purposes, a crucial distinction must be made between functionalism as a theoretical tradition and a functionalist mode of social explanation. The former incorporates the latter, but the latter can stand on its own and can be (and sometimes is) associated with other theoretical traditions. Functionalism as a theoretical tradition began in anthropology in the early part of this century with the works of such prominent figures as Bronislaw Malinowski and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown. 1 These thinkers sought to identify the parts of society, show how they were interrelated, and demonstrate their function or functions for the maintenance of society. Both Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski, especially the former, were greatly influenced by Emile Durkheim, whose ideas also had a major influence on sociological functionalism. Functionalism came into sociology partly by way of importation from anthropology and, more substantially, through the work of Talcott Parsons and his students and disciples. In The Social System, Parsons generated a functionalist model of societies as social systems. 2 He was preoccupied (virtually to the point of obsession) with the “problem of order,” and his sociological theory is overwhelmingly devoted to dealing with this problem. Like Durkheim, Parsons strongly rejected nineteenth-century utilitarian thinking. Society could not be composed simply of individuals pursuing their own interests, for such a thing would not be stable

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